'The Lord be with you now, my daughter!'
And with her wrinkled hand the nurse
Then crossed the girl and mumbled verse.
20
'Oh, I'm in love,' again she pleaded
With her old friend. 'My little dove,
You're just not well, you're overheated.'
'Oh, let me be now . . . I'm in love.'
And all the while the moon was shining
And with its murky light defining
Tatyana's charms and pallid air,
Her long, unloosened braids of hair,
And drops of tears . . . while on a hassock,
Beside the tender maiden's bed,
A kerchief on her grizzled head,
Sat nanny in her quilted cassock;
And all the world in silence lay
Beneath the moon's seductive ray.
21
Far off Tatyana ranged in dreaming,
Bewitched by moonlight's magic curse. . .
And then a sudden thought came gleaming:
'I'd be alone now . . . leave me, nurse.
But give me first a pen and paper;
I won't be long . . . just leave the taper.
Good night.' She's now alone. All's still.
The moonlight shines upon her sill.
And propped upon an elbow, writing,
Tatyana pictures her Eugene,
And in a letter, rash and green,
Pours forth a maiden's blameless plighting.
The letter's readyall but sent. . .
For whom, Tatyana, is it meant?
22
I've known great beauties proudly distant,
As cold and chaste as winter snow;
Implacable, to all resistant,
Impossible for mind to know;
I've marvelled at their haughty manner,
Their natural virtue's flaunted banner;
And I confess, from them I fled,
As if in terror I had read
Above their brows the sign of Hades:
Their joy is striking men with fear,
For love offends these charming ladies.
Perhaps along the Neva's shore
You too have known such belles before.
23
Why I've seen ladies so complacent
